03 - Sagittarius is Bleeding (21 page)

Read 03 - Sagittarius is Bleeding Online

Authors: Peter David - (ebook by Undead)

So she had invited Billy over to share a nice homemade dinner, which was an
impressive achievement considering that she couldn’t cook worth a damn. That
little fact had never bothered her before. She had jokingly stated on more than
one occasion that she’d joined up with the military specifically so that she never had to worry about making meals for herself ever again. She would just
eat her meals in whatever mess hall was on hand and that would be that.

But this night she was getting together with Billy, and she wanted it to be
special. The problem was that she had no cooking facilities in her quarters. So
she’d gone to the mess hall and convinced the cooks there to let her try her
hand at preparing a nice dinner that she could then take out and back to her
quarters. There, she told herself, she would be able to boast to Billy that she
had made it with her own two hands.

Unfortunately, her cooking acumen did not magically improve as she endeavored
to prepare a couple of nice steaks for the two of them. Instead she had come
damned close to burning both pieces of meat and only some timely intervention by
the chefs on hand had averted disaster. They managed to salvage her efforts and
even provide a nice presentation of the meal, which Dualla proudly brought back
to her quarters and endeavored to keep warm as Billy ran late.

And later.

And later.

Finally, a good hour and a quarter after Billy was supposed to have arrived,
there was a knock at Dualla’s door. The food might no longer have been warm, but
Dualla was certainly seething. “Come in,” she said with a tone that indicated
all hope should be abandoned by those who entered.

Billy hesitated a moment and considered running in the other direction,
because Dualla’s voice made it clear that he was in as much trouble as he
already suspected he was. But, deciding to be a man about it, he sucked it up
and entered with a smile plastered on his face. He proudly held up an
honest-to-gods small plant, with beautiful blue cup-shaped flowers blossoming at
the top. He said, “Sorry I’m late. Things got a little… crazy…”

“For this late,” Dualla said icily, “I’d expect you to be sporting at least
three visible wounds.” In spite of herself, she focused on the bouquet he was
extending toward her. “You hang up my beautiful dinner which, by the way, I
worked my ass off to prepare for you, and you think you can bribe your way back
into my good graces with some flowers?”

“That was pretty much my feeble hope, yeah,” he admitted.

She grunted at that and then, in spite of herself, extended a hand. He
crossed the room and handed her the flowers. She brought them up to her face and
inhaled deeply, and then—against all of her better impulses—moaned in pleasure.
“My gods,” she intoned in a voice that bordered on the orgasmic, “where did you
get these? How the frak is it possible?”

“Connections,” he said.

She opened her eyes narrowly and eyed him with suspicion. “You didn’t get
these from the black market, did you?”

“What a ridiculous question,” he said quickly. “You know how the president
feels about that. I can’t believe you’d even ask me.”

“A ridiculous question… and yet I can’t help but notice that you’ve yet
to answer it.”

“That’s because I’m astounded that you would even begin to insinuate that—”

“All right,” Dualla said. She hadn’t forgotten how annoyed she was with him,
and yet she couldn’t help but laugh. “All right, forget it. Forget I asked.
Forget I said anything about it at all. Anything I should know about the care
and feeding of this?”

“Well,” he said, “you’ll probably need to acquire a lamp that simulates
sunlight. Otherwise I’m not sure it’ll keep blooming.”

“I see. And where do you suggest I get such a device?”

Billy paused a moment and made a great show of thinking, even though he had undoubtedly thought about it before. “I know a guy who
knows a guy who knows a girl,” he said after much consideration. “Not that it’s
anyone connected with the black market, of course, because I would never—”

She put up her hands in surrender. “Let’s have dinner, you big idiot.”

The steak was naturally stone cold, and she thought it was tough as boot
leather. But he made a great show of loving every bite, and was so enthused
about the quality of the meal that she was having trouble staying mad at him. By
the time dinner was over, as much as she hated to admit it, she had more or less
allowed her once-towering irritation to vanish into the lost recesses of her
memory.

“So how’s the investigation going?”

“Investigation?”

“You know,” he prompted. “Into trying to figure out how the Cylons knew where
we were going to be making our Jump.”

“Oh.” She shook her head wearily, then stood and proceeded to clear away the
dinner dishes. “Honestly, I don’t know. From what I hear, Tigh is conducting it.
He grilled me up one side and down the other, and since then he’s moved on. I
couldn’t tell you who’s on the hot seat now. What a frakking prick he is.”

“I honestly don’t understand why Adama keeps him on as executive officer,”
Billy admitted. “I wonder about it from time to time…”

“Yeah, well, I wonder about it a lot more than that,” said Dualla. “The man
is a boozer and a frak-up, and everyone in CIC knows it. Hell, everyone on the
ship knows it.”

“Does he know they know it?”

“Who knows?” She cleaned off the dishes in the sink, wiping them with a
towel, and said, “And how are things with Roslin?”

“Fine.”

Something in the way he said it caught her attention. She continued wiping
the plate but she wasn’t especially paying attention to it. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing.”

“Billy,” she put down the plate. “What’s going on?”

“Going on?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you think,” he asked, “that something’s going on?”

“Because I know you,” said Dualla, moving across the room. She turned the
chair around and sat, straddling it. “Whenever you’re lying about something or
trying to hide something from me, you start repeating the ends of my sentences.”

“Repeating the—?” He caught himself and scowled with irritation. “That’s
absurd,” he said, but as protests went, it sounded admittedly lame.

“It’s not absurd. Is something wrong with the president?”

“Dualla,” he said patiently, “even if there was something wrong—which I’m not
saying there is, but even if there were—you know I couldn’t tell you.”

“I don’t know that at all, Billy,” she replied, clear irritation in her
voice. “I thought we had at least some degree of trust built up, you and me.”

“We do.”

“Well, then—?”

“But President Roslin trusts me, too. Are you asking me to make a choice
between those two levels of trust?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m…” Her voice trailed off and she looked
down. “No,” she sighed, clearly annoyed with herself that she had said anything.
“No, of course not. Especially when, y’know… you’ve obviously made the choice. Your loyalty to
the president is… it’s admirable.”

“Thank you. But…”

She looked up. “But what
…?”

“But it’s always going to put us on opposite sides, isn’t it. Because your
loyalty to Adama is always going to be more important than to me, and my loyalty
to Roslin is going to be more important than you. And if we’re going to have any
sort of a relationship, the first thing that has to happen is that each of us is
more important to each other than anything. So basically we’re screwed.”

Her jaw twitched, because there was so much she wanted to say in response to
that. But in the end, all she could think of to say in reply was, “Seems to me
like you’ve got it pretty worked out.”

“No, I don’t,” he insisted, shaking his head. “I don’t have anything worked
out at all. Because there’s still so much that I want to say, and—”

“How about this, then.” Dualla was on her feet, putting up a hand to silence
him. “How about you don’t say it. How about we just… we just let this one lie
here for a while.”

“Dee, I still want to—”

“Want to what, Billy?” she said, trying and failing to keep the exasperation
out of her voice. “Want to talk some more about how hopeless everything is, and
how we should just give up?”

“I didn’t say any of that!”

“Well… I did. Because you know what, Billy? If I can’t even ask a casual
question about how the president of the Colonies is without getting a whole
lecture on divided loyalties, then I don’t really see the point of any of this.”

“Oh, come on, Dee…”

“I gotta go.”

“What?” He was dumbfounded by her reaction. “Dee, we can still—”

“I have to go to a meeting.”

“Of what?”

“Of… the People Under Suspicion by Tigh support group. You can let
yourself out, okay?” She moved quickly toward the door and was out before Billy
could say anything more.

She headed off down the hall, her mind swirling with frustration and anger
that was directed both at Billy and herself. She felt that she had handled the
whole thing very badly. The truth was that he hadn’t said anything that hadn’t
already occurred to her as well. She had just wanted to believe that she was
wrong, and despised the notion that matters might be as hopeless as he was
indicating. What angered her in particular was that he’d been so matter-of-fact
about it. At the very least, he should sound as if the entire prospect was
tearing him up inside. Instead he was giving a simple, clinical analysis of
their situation in the same manner that he might have presented a report on the
economy to the president.

Was she being unreasonable? Maybe. But at that moment she didn’t particularly
care.

And what was worse, she wasn’t entirely sure she cared about Billy all that
much.

She hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself, but although Billy had been a
pleasant enough dalliance… and although she’d always think he was one of
the sweetest guys in the world… lately her thoughts and attentions had been
shifting elsewhere. There had been something—she wasn’t sure what, but
something—connecting lately between her and Lee Adama. She had no idea where it
might lead. But it was sufficient to make her think there was something there worth exploring. She just
couldn’t do it, of course, while she was involved with Billy.

Or could she?

After all, Billy didn’t know. They hadn’t promised fealty to each other.
There might have been a vague sort of “understanding,” but nothing had been
stated implicitly. Perhaps what she really needed to do was compare and
contrast. See for herself how it felt being with each of them, and which brought
her more… satisfaction.

It might not have been fair to either of them, but it was all she could think
of. Because she didn’t want to break Billy’s heart for no reason, but she didn’t
want to slam the door on exploring her feelings about Lee.

Billy, meanwhile, was dwelling on the fact that he might well have had dates
in the past that ended abruptly, but it was hard to recall any of them going
down in flames quite this badly. He tried to imagine just how it might have gone
better, what he could possibly have said to her that would have prevented their
evening from dissolving into a pained discussion of loyalties and politics.

“Well, Dee,” he said with a faux jovial attitude, “it’s funny you should ask
about President Roslin. See, she’s been having such horrific dreams for a while
now that she can’t sleep through the night anymore. She’s starting to
hallucinate; she’s acting erratically. She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever
known, and she’s beginning to come unravelled. And… here’s the most
interesting part… she thinks that the reason that she’s having all these
dreams is because Sharon Valerii’s unborn child is influencing her somehow.
Maybe trying to torment her. Maybe trying to warn her. Hard to say. So…
how’s your day been?” He sat back, closed his eyes and moaned softly.
“Yeah. Yeah, that would go over really well. Good way to go with that, Billy. That
would have enamored her of you and kept confidence boosted in Roslin while we’re
at it.” He was beginning to think he was going to have to resign himself to the
idea that not only was his relationship with Dualla going nowhere, but he might
well never have a relationship with a woman ever again.

And as he pondered the bleak landscape that represented his dating life, he
was completely unaware that he had just managed to accomplish the one thing that
he never would have done consciously. He had just betrayed Laura Roslin.

 

 
CHAPTER
13

 

 

In his quarters at the end of a very long day, William Adama was coming to
the realization that his day was about to get even longer.

He listened for the second time to the recording that Tigh had brought him
and was still having trouble believing what he was hearing. He’d been listening
via an ear piece, for Tigh—ever cautious—felt that it was best not to play back
the recordings in the very, very off chance that someone might wander past and
hear their own conversation coming from Adama’s quarters. Now Adama removed the
ear piece from his ear and looked up at Tigh in clear astonishment… which for
Adama, who had a reputation for a stoic expression that bordered on the
inscrutable, amounted to a flicker of surprise in his gaze. “Are you sure he
didn’t know we were listening in?”

“Obviously, I have no way of knowing for certain,” Tigh replied. “But it
certainly sounds like Keikeya is talking to himself, and that he has his guard
down. That’s he’s not saying it for our ears alone.”

Adama leaned back in his chair and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Why wouldn’t Roslin say anything to me about it, if she’s
having these sorts of concerns?”

“Who can ever understand women?” Tigh shrugged. “They have their own way of
thinking. Maybe she was concerned how you’d react to it. Maybe she—”

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